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Transition from “I do not
understand it” to “I understand it” is thinking

Three Lessons from Neurology to Science Teachers

There is no need for repeating again and again that the ways of
teaching must be improved, that memorizing only is not enough and teachers have
to develop students’ problem-solving skills, etc. Today the question is what specific changes must be done in
teaching techniques in order to help developing students’ problem-solving
skills.

Neurologists know
that learning is always resulting in some changes in a brain (for example, see 1,2). These changes can
be: changes in the state of brain cells, or in the connection between the cells
- but there is always some kind of physiological
change which happens as the result of learning.

Without acting
a brain cannot achieve a learning effect. Educational constructivists interpret
this in the following way; every specific
knowledge must be constructed by a person while performing a specific learning activity.

If we believe in constructivism (and we have to because of the neurology),
we have to rethink the way we prepare our lessons. The common old-fashioned way
of teaching is “first a teacher has to tell this, then this, then this”, etc.
We can call this type of teaching as “knowledge representation”. This type of teaching
excites the least amount of neurological activities in students’ brain. From
neurological point of viewthe way to teach
should be based on guiding students’ activities: “firs students must perform
this action, then that action”, etc (of course, at first, all the main/unit/elementary
learning actions must be discovered, described, classified). We can call this type
of teaching as “designing and guiding
students actions” (which requires from a
teacher designing his/her own actions).

II.

After rethinking the teaching
strategy, we have to rethink the time needed to study a subject. The current
way of timing an educational process is based on the “knowledge representation”
teaching approach; i.e. the elementary units
of time are the time periods needed to a teacher to tell the elementary units
of the information. The use of the other teaching strategy leads to the necessity
for using a new basis for the timing of the educational process; now it must be
a time needed to perform a unit action
(which might be different for different students).

A teacher alone cannot reconstruct the whole learning process of
his/her students and completely redesign his/her teaching process, but at least
he or she can change the ratio between his/her lecturing time and the time his/her
students can use for conducting their own leaning activities.

When learning physics acting means
solving problems (theoretical or
experimental). If the circumstances allow to do it - a teacher shouldtry keeping at least two hours of problem-solving
per each hour of lecturing.

Now we have come closely to the next educational problem, i.e.
developing students’ problem-solving skills.

III.

We are starting our reasoning by saying that problem-solving skills can be developed only through solving problems.Creating the solution to the given
problem involves a specific process usually called as critical thinking.

In order to perform critical thinking
one needs to use a very sophisticated biological tool, which is called a brain. There is no critical thinking without a brain(the opposite is not true).

We can say that the level of the
development of a brain defines the quality of critical thinking, which in turn defines
the quality of problem solving skills.

The development of problem-solving skills is closely
connected with the development of a brain.

For example,
if we wanted to develop the students’ ability to run we could work on the development
of students’ lungs (e.g. by making a student hold the breath as along as
possible), but first of all we would need to work on the development of
students’ legs, because

LEGS are
the main instrument for RUNNING.

When we want to develop the students’ ability to think
critically we have to develop first of all the main instrument of thinking,
which is a brain. A brain is the
physiological basis of critical thinking.

It is well known fact that a well-trained/developed
brain is capable to solve difficult problems.

But there is also an opposite connection.

Solving
problems systematically helps to the development of a brain.

Let’s use an analogy.

Let us assume that students have been doing for years
one type of physical exercises only, which are squats. Then at the end of
education, they can squat many times without any difficulties. However, all the
other muscles, which are not involved in squats, would be highly
underdeveloped. Students would not be able to perform any other exercises
effectively.

A brain works the same way (it is kind of a muscle, at
least it consists of cells which can change – neurologists tell us this, and it
is the important lesson for us, teachers).

If for many years
the majority of school lessons have been based on memorizing and reproduction,
other types of intellectual activities would be difficult for students to
perform.

An underdeveloped brain can deal with only easy tasks.
At the age of 14 – 15 the human brain – as “a muscle” – needs to be exercised
or it will not be developed to the maximum of its abilities. If that is not a
case, if students leave a school with an
underdeveloped brain, later in life to make even moderate progress in a brain
development, significant efforts and time will be needed.

If we want to significantly increase the total nationwide number of
school students who are well prepared to a college or to the demands of the
contemporary technologies, we have to increase the number of school students
having a well-developed/trained brain. To achieve this goal, we have to start
at preschool and elementary school levels and reorganize them making
accent/stress/effort on the students’ brain development (this is what the
early childhood education must be about!).

We do not have to pour into children’s heads a large volume
of knowledge, but rather the structure of knowledge should be changed to
support learning activities of students. A head is a storage for information,
but at first it is the place where new thoughts are being created (BTW: the best way to store information in a one’s
memory is to deal with it, use it, but not just to memorize it). We have to
exercise/train the children’s brain by using different tasks/problems/exercises to help it (brain) to become as
developed as the Mother Nature allows do this.

It is very
important to note that focusing only on math, or only on reading is not
effective because it will lead to the development of only certain parts of a
brain. Students need to practice as many different
activities as possible, and that includes reading a writing, math, and science,
but also sports and arts, and music, and theater.

One of the consequences of the lessons we – educators
– take form neurology is that one of the most important problems of educational
science is the problem of the influence of the training/teaching methods on the
functioning of a students’ brain. I personally consider Math and Physics as the
subjects which are best suited to serve as a brain developing tool
(“brainbuilding”).

To develop a one’s body, we can exercise it by using a
special technique, which means using a specific exercise for developing a
specific muscle. Or, we can just keep doing a heavy/difficult work, because after
a while the one’s body becomes strong enough.One will not become the second Arnold Schwarzenegger, the ones body will
become strong and developed.

The similar approach will work for developing a brain.

In
order to become developed

a
brain needs go through prolonged, regular, and different exercises.

Even if a teacher does not know a special technique for developing a
students’ brain (which don’t really exist yet), her or she can keep students
busy with solving different and complicated problems.

Here we need to turn again to the difference between two different
types of teaching (this approach represents the simples classification/model of teaching types, which is completely
sufficient for any practitioner).

Based on two different types of teaching we have two
different sets of teachers.

The first set contains “introducers”. An introducer
concerns only with extracting knowledge from his/her memory and presenting it
to students, plus about giving some illustrations.

Imagine, for example, a teacher who teaches a class
how to play basketball. “It is a ball. You may bounce it off a floor; you can
use your left hand or your right hand to bounce the ball. You may throw it out
in a basket (not in your basket!), or you can throw it to each other. Who wants
to touch the ball? Do not kick it! Perfect. I think my job is done. Have a good
game.”

This type of teaching will not help much to develop a
students’ brain because a teacher does not provide any influence on a mental
process happening in students minds during listening to a teacher.

The second set of teachers can be called “coachers” (but
not as just described before). A teacher’s responsibility as “a coach”/”guide”
is to help every student to become capable of “to play physics” (or other
subject). It means, a teacher’s work does not stop with presenting a problem; presenting
a problem is just the beginning of a teaching work. A teacher has to find the
way to help students to build/create the solution of the given problem, but in
such a way that the solution was their (students’) solution, not teacher’s (because
it is their brain that needs to be developed during the solution of the
problem).

If the problem is too easy to solve, there is no any
developmental effect. If the problem is too hard, students just give up, and
again there is no any developmental effect. But if the problem is hard enough,
students get stuck. If a teacher reveals the solution right now, students will
learn how to solve that particular problem, but again there will be no any
developmental effect on a brain. However, if students will not make any further
progress in creating a solution, no developmental effect will be achieved
again. It seems like without help students
cannot advance in creating the solution to a problem, but withhelp the developmental
effect is absent. What is the resolution of this contradiction? The answer, in
principle, is simple; do not give students
the solution, give them a clue. A smart hint can help students to make a
step ahead toward the solution (this is basically just a brief description of the Zone of Proximal
Development approach).

At this instant (when students get stuck) the most
important question a teacher needs to answer is: what clue to provide to students?

An experienced teacher knows the answer to this
question based on the numerous successes and mistakes he or she done in the
past in these situations.

However, nowadays, the search for efficient clues can
find some clues (J ) in neurology.

We know that any reaction
starts from the recognizing an
action.

When a brain receives unknown signals it gets
confused, and the first thing a brain is trying to do is matching the incoming
signals with the signals stored in its memory.

A very common first reaction a student gives when
offered to solve a problem is “I ‘ve never seen that a problem before”, which
means that the student cannot recognize the situation described in the text of
the problem.